April 7, 2023 —– Chart #190
Hello Music Friends,
Hey folks, welcome to another edition of Chart of the Week. Well I have admitted to you many times before that I am a lifelong Parrothead, a genuine toes in the sand guitar-totin’ fan of the icon of the Caribbean, Mr. Jimmy Buffett. I could post JB songs for months and still have plenty in the satchel. But today I decided to feature the Parrothead anthem, Margaritaville.
“Margaritaville” is a 1977 song by American popular music singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffett from the album Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes. This song was written about a drink Buffett discovered at Lung’s Cocina del Sur restaurant in Austin, Texas, and the first huge surge of tourists who descended on Key West, Florida, around that time. He wrote most of the song one night at a friend’s house in Austin, and finished it while spending time in Key West. In the United States “Margaritaville” reached number eight on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, and went to number one on the Easy Listening chart, also peaking at No. 13 on the Hot Country Songs chart. Billboard ranked it number 14 on its 1977 Pop Singles year-end chart. It remains Buffett’s highest charting solo single.
The song is about a man spending an entire season at a beach resort community. The three verses describe his day-to-day activities. In the first verse, he passes his time playing guitar on his front porch and watching tourists sunbathe, all the while eating sponge cake and waiting for a pot of shrimp to boil. In the second verse, he has nothing to show for his time except a tattoo of a woman that he cannot remember getting. In the third and final verse, he blew out his flip-flop, stepped on a pop-top, cuts his heel, and cruises on back home to ease his pain with a fresh batch of margaritas. When the song was used during live performances, it was changed to “I broke my leg twice, I had to limp on back home”.
The three choruses reveal that the narrator is drowning his sorrows over a failed romance, and his friends are telling him that his former girlfriend is at fault. The last line of each shows his shifting attitude toward the situation: first “it’s nobody’s fault,” then “hell, it could be my fault,” and finally “it’s my own damn fault.”
If you have never been to a JB concert, this is what you are missing: https://youtu.be/8VG7EuQsHEw
Buffett revealed during the recording of an episode of CMT’s Crossroads with the Zac Brown Band that “Margaritaville” was actually supposed to be recorded by Elvis Presley, but Presley died the same year the song was released (he declined the offer before the song could be recorded).
I could write lots more about this troubadour, but instead I am just going to share with you the recipe for a “Perfect Margarita”
Jimmy Buffett’s Signature Margarita
1 oz. Margaritaville Tequila Gold
1/2 oz. Margaritaville Tequila Silver
1/2 oz. triple sec
1/2 oz. orange curaçao
1/2 oz. lime juice
2 lime wedges
Rim margarita glass with salt (optional). Combine ingredients in a shaker filled with ice. Squeeze lime on top, then drop wedges in. Cover, shake vigorously and pour. Put on your favorite Jimmy Buffett album, prop your bare feet up and enjoy.
Keep Rockin’,
Stan Bradshaw